Today we talked about the studio going forward, specifically in relation to our contact with the writers. In our previous class, most of us and the writers agreed that we would enjoy working on a series, in smaller groups and that we would prefer episodes about “everyday people” in relatable situations, that are lightly comical. Today we found out that the writers will still work in a “writers room”, all working on the one project. I’m not sure how it will all develop and I don’t know enough about writing to say what would work best, but it would be great to be able to collaborate and talk with individual writers or at least smaller groups. They will write a serial, a multi-episode production with an overarching storyline. This wasn’t what we had decided we wanted, but it was the studio’s purpose and I’m sure it will challenge and entertain us in the right ways.
We talked about how there will be ‘dialogue’ between the writers and ourselves. They will write small, unpolished snippets of content for the next month or so, which we will produce and develop visually; e.g. location scouting, shooting a scene or episode (multiple times perhaps), casting etc. This is when we will develop our technical skills so we are ready for when the writers give us an actual episode. I also appreciate that is it mirrors bigger productions- as producers we are collaborating with the writers to develop a script. It will all start by us providing a prompt, or video basis from which the writers will develop, or begin to develop, the story and script.
Robin showed us a video made by someone from a different studio, of a girl feeding her cat. It was simple yet it could inspire a story. After watching this we were tasked with making our own, as part of Assessment 2. I will write about this process in a separate blog post.